Chapter 5
As the road disappeared right in front of her in a flash of water and mud, Jenna slammed her brakes. It didn't even take a blink to realize that was absolutely the wrong thing to do.
The small car hydroplaned, sliding closer and closer to the empty pit that had once been the road. Water washed down the mountain on her right and surged into the gully that had formed where the road simply cracked and fell away.
Her brain flashed with sharp memories of every emergency instruction she'd ever been given. She turned into the spin. Pumped the brakes. And rode out the skid.
If she went into the water, she should open the windows and let the car flood so she could get out.
It seemed none of the advice was useful right now, and the emergency mechanism she was depending on was murmured prayer.
She wasn't sure why, but the words that came to her lips were an old one she found in a book somewhere years ago.
She couldn't quite recall the religion. Vaguely rhymed, short and fast, the words asked for the power to enact her own will.
She chanted it three times before the wheels gripped and she came to a stop. She couldn't be that close, could she?
From behind the wheel, the front edge of the car appeared to hang over the broken edge of asphalt.
The tires must still be on the road. She wasn’t falling in, but she wasn't staying here either!
Who knew when the piece of road she sat on would become weak enough to fall away? It could be any moment.
Slamming the car into reverse, she fought the sharp urge to spin her tires.
After she made it about forty feet away, sense took over.
She was far enough back that it was unlikely the road would wash out from under her, and driving in reverse on a road in this weather where she couldn't see more than five feet in any direction during the mad downburst wasn't safe.
She tucked herself as far to the right-hand side of the road as she could, but there was only a couple feet of gravel shoulder, not fit for parking.
For once she was grateful her chosen car color was a pop of sparkly blue.
Hopefully, someone coming down the road would see it and not just plow into her.
Maybe it was a good thing she was sticking out into the roadway—it might stop some other person from driving right into the abyss. Because right now, crashing into her car would be better than going another forty feet and plummeting over the edge.
Jenna sat quietly then, taking stock. She’d pulled to the side, waiting out the rain like she'd expected, just not in the way she'd expected.
Realizing there wasn't much else to do but sit and hope the storm burned itself out sooner rather than later, she considered calling her Mom back home and letting her know what had happened.
She sighed into the charged air. Since the ordeal wasn't yet over, all a call would do was cause unnecessary worry. Jenna had already taken enough years off her mother's life as it was. No, when she was safe and somewhere warm, she would call and let her mother know, but not right now.
Holding up her phone, she realized there wasn't much signal anyway. Storm like this, the cell towers might be out. Or maybe she was just in another dead zone. She’d driven through two already—though she would have thought they didn’t still exist in the US.
Turning the engine off, Jenna decided to preserve her gas and battery. There wasn’t any radio signal anymore anyway. She’d turn the car back on if her phone lost battery, but no one was coming to get her. She didn't even know anyone in the area, though she was coming to find them.
She didn't have a phone number of anyone nearby. What would she even say? She’d been nervous enough about this whole thing that she hadn't even emailed or texted anyone. She'd simply gotten online and looked for the names of people the DNA test told her were relative matches.
There were three people she’d matched close enough to want to talk to them: two possible cousins, and what was most likely a maternal grandmother—Astoria Lockheart.
That was who Jenna had come to find. If there were others, that would be fantastic.
But one connection at a time. She’d hoped to find her birth mother with the testing, and it simply hadn't popped up.
But these people might know where to find her.
Several years ago, someone told her that the days of closed adoptions and anonymous donations were long over.
Any adult could do exactly as Jenna had done—pop into a DNA test and figure out who your genetic parents were.
She hadn't done it at eighteen, and it hadn't been that easy.
But she'd found something, so she’d hopped in the car to come see if she could meet these people, eventually.
If she liked them, she would tell them why she showed up in their tiny little berg nestled into the Blue Ridge Mountains.
That was, if she could make it there alive.
She waited in the car as the rain pounded on the windows and the occasional crack of a tree giving up against the onslaught broke the monotony.
She had waited about twenty minutes when she was startled at the realization that some of the pounding was actually something directly hitting her car.
Twisting one way then the other, she quickly scanned the windows, unable to see much through the gray water that slid over the smooth metal.
It had come from the back corner passenger side, and she searched for something beyond the window but saw nothing. God help her if it was a bear. She jolted when the sound came again from directly behind her this time. Twisting back, she saw him.
Not a bear.
She was letting out a sigh of relief when he pounded on the window again, flat hand, pale brown skin smacking at the glass.
He wasn't close enough for her to see his face, and she pulled back just from being shocked.
But he leaned his face down closer as if that would help, then motioned to her to roll down the window, which Jenna thought was absolutely crazy.
It quickly became clear that he wasn't giving up, and he waved his hand again.
She had to turn the car back on and hit the button to make the window work. Sure enough, just as she suspected, the moment she even got the window cracked, the rain came pouring in. She was now soaked in a line across the front of her shirt.
"You can't stay here," he had to yell it over the top of the roaring winds and smacking water, over the sound of the creek tumbling by not far enough away for Jenna's comfort—and clearly not for his either.
What else could she do? She didn't know him from Adam. Looking closer, she saw he had kind, dark green eyes, a strong jaw, hair that was almost blonde, and skin that was almost brown. Some mix of ancestry she couldn’t even begin to place.
"Come on," he told her, reaching for the door handle and tugging at it, only to find it locked. His frustration showed.
Yeah, she thought, he might be incredibly good-looking and maybe even charming—but weren’t most serial killers?
"Why are you out here?" she demanded.
"I was out looking for any stuck animals," he said, as if that were normal. Then he pointed in front of her car. "The road’s washed away."
"I know," she told him dryly, as if she were just sitting here for no good reason in the middle of a windy, backwards two-lane highway in her little blue car with the out-of-state plate he’d surely already spotted.
"Come with me," he told her, this time motioning her out of the car.
"I think I’ll just wait it out."
He threw his head back and laughed. The hair that she thought might be blonde was now slicked to his skin.
"Honey," he said, "the road's gone. You need to get somewhere safe and dry."
Well, she thought, she'd been dry until he had her roll down the window. "All my things are in here."
But he shook his head. "Just bring your purse. Shoes. Phone. Leave everything else."
No. She didn’t want to. This wasn't really all her things.
She still had her apartment back in Texas.
Her roommate was still there. But she'd packed for a trip of indeterminate time. There were all kinds of things in the suitcases in the back—including her baby book, in case anyone here wanted to see it. She couldn’t just leave it.
"We’ll come back for it later," he told her.
She sighed, beginning to wonder if she had any other choice. Then she asked, "What if the road washes away?"
He almost frowned at her like she was crazy. "Then you’ll lose everything anyway.”
Not comforting.
He continued, “It would be better if you're not in the car when that happens."
This time, she unlocked the doors, feeling she truly had no other option.
When she watched documentaries about girls who'd been kidnapped, so many times she felt they were stupid or just made bad decisions. Now, she began to wonder how many felt they didn’t have any other option. They’d placed themselves in a strange man's hands, and it simply hadn't turned out well.
Grabbing for her purse, she slung the strap across her body then looked back before she opened the door—as if there was traffic roaring down this road.
"Come on then," he said, slamming her door behind her almost before she was completely out of the car.
She'd expected to walk back down the road. But she stopped and set the lock on her car and wondered if she’d offended him.
He grabbed for her hand, her fingers now wet and slick between his where he laced them tightly together.
She hoped he wasn't a serial killer—because she liked it. For some reason, she felt secure.
Until he moved around to the back of the car and began to pull her along. Stepping directly into the woods, he tugged her along with him as they headed into the trees, directly up the side of the mountain.